Lexscien, or to give it its full title Lexscien: Library of Exploratory Science, is best known as the online home of the Society for Psychical Research’s publications – its Proceedings, Journal, and magazine Paranormal Review (plus Paranormal Review’s earlier incarnation The Psi Researcher). It also carries a number of other publications: the Journal of Parapsychology (which is available free to members of the Parapsychological Association); Research in Parapsychology; the Journal of Scientific Exploration (all issues older than two years are free on the Society for Scientific Exploration’s website); and the European Journal of Parapsychology (which ceased publication in 2010 and for which all issues from 2004 to 2010 are free on its website, with the long-term aim of adding the rest back to its foundation in 1975). Despite being listed as ‘coming soon’, the Institut Métapsychique International’s La Revue Métapsychique seems to be there already.
Also ‘coming soon’ (though ‘soon’ in
Lexscien’s world appears to be a somewhat flexible concept because their status
has been so designated for rather a long time) are the Journal of Exceptional Human Experience and Parapsychology Abstracts International. As the list of journals suggests, Lexscien
works with a range of partners apart from the SPR: the Rhine Research Center;
the Parapsychological Association; the Society for Scientific Exploration, and
the ex-editors of the European Journal of
Parapsychology. When (or perhaps if)
the forthcoming publications appear on Lexscien, the Exceptional Human Experiences
Network will join the list (founded by the late Rhea White, it is now run by
the Parapsychology Foundation and said to publish the Journal of Exceptional Human Experience and Parapsychology Abstracts International, though the EHEN website
looks dormant). Enquiries to the
Parapsychology Foundation to learn more of the timescale for the publications’
inclusion failed to elicit a response.
There are also some books on the site: Frederic Myers’ Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily
Death (1903), Edmund Gurney, Frederic Myers and Frank Podmore’s Phantasms of the Living (1886), and
Eugene Osty’s Supernormal Faculties in
Man (1923).
On the face of it this is quite an
impressive roster, albeit duplicating some items freely available elsewhere,
but there are drawbacks to the Lexscien site.
The SPR publications constitute by far the most significant element of
Lexscien, to the extent that it may be assumed that Lexscien is an arm of the
Society. However, it is a
privately-owned service, the owners operating as C-FAR, The Centre for
Fundamental and Anomalies Research. This
is essentially David and Julie Rousseau: David Rousseau is listed on the C-FAR
website as ‘Projects Director’ and Julie ‘Development Director’, with the rest
of the ‘research team’ being Dr Zofia Weaver, Dr Richard Broughton, Dr Ed May,
Adrian Ryan and Mary Rose Barrington.
Strangely Julie and David Rousseau (at the
moment – these things have a habit of changing when flagged up) list themselves
on the Lexscien page devoted to C-FAR as financial supporters of C-FAR, along
with a number of others, as if C-FAR were an entity independent of them. The organisation is registered at Companies
House (Company number 04352039) with Dr David Rousseau as Secretary and
Director, and Julie Rousseau as Director.
The company accounts are available to view online but are singularly
uninformative and look to the untutored eye more like a tax reduction vehicle
than the statements of an organisation actively engaged in anomalies research. Lexscien is not included as a separate income
stream on C-FAR’s annual statements even though appearing on C-FAR’s website as
one of its projects. Nor does income
from C-FAR appear in the SPR’s Annual Report and Accounts, at least not as a
separate item. Despite this reciprocal
opacity, the SPR’s 2013-14 Annual Report noted that £11,600 had been given to C-FAR to update and upgrade
Lexscien. Perhaps it would have been
wise to insist on some kind of open accounting of any monies owed first before
handing over such a large sum. C-FAR may
be not-for-profit, as the Lexscien overview states, but that declaration does
not seem to have been tested.
SPR members are entitled to free use of
Lexscien as part of their Society membership, but generally it is a
subscription site, and is not particularly cheap. There are two types of subscription,
affiliate and standard, costing £18 and £85 per annum respectively. The affiliate rate is available to members of
partner organisations who wish to use the rest of the Lexscien site. This is certainly cheaper than individual
subscriptions to those publications it carries that have to be paid for but is
still quite expensive. The Lexscien
‘pricing’ page states that: ‘At least 65% of proceeds are distributed to the
participating organisations, and the rest is (sic) used to expand and improve the
library.’ However, the FAQ answer to the
question ‘Can I choose which organisation benefits from my subscription?’ is
more complicated:
‘Not directly. C-FAR takes no more than 35% of
gross proceeds to cover the cost of running and expanding the library. Half of
the remaining 65% is then divided between the organisations in proportion to
the number of pages of literature they have put into the library. The other
half is divided in proportion to the pages viewed by users. The net proceeds
from downloads are passed directly to the organisation that supplied the
downloaded material. This means that the supplier of the literature that is
used most, benefits most, although everyone gets a share.’
That sounds like quite a lot of money
should be heading the SPR’s way as it is by far the largest ‘partner’. How much remains to be seen. In the meantime funds are going the other
way. The £11,600 the SPR gave was a
useful boost for Lexscien because there had been complaints about its ease of
use with newer browsers, and until that point SPR publications only went up to
2008. However, there is no
acknowledgement of the SPR’s grant on the Lexscien home page, nor any reference
to grants/donations that might have come from other partners (and if none did
the question arises, why only the SPR when improvements to Lexscien benefited
all partners?), nor any indication of how far behind other publications
are. Also, the quality of many of the
pages is still poor and little, or more likely no, effort has been made to
clean up defective scans that introduced noise and which hamper searches of the
database.
Bearing in mind how long the SPR update
took, and how long the coming soon’ publications have been forthcoming with no
appearance yet in sight, it seems that there is little incentive for the owners
of Lexscien to expand the content further.
I have suggested to Lexscien’s owners a couple of times that the SPR’s Frederic
W. H. Myers Memorial Lectures, which were produced as booklets (see appendix
below), be added to the online library but did not receive a reply. Which I suppose is fair enough – in Boston Matrix
terms Lexscien is a cash cow and ticks along nicely, and if market growth is
low why bother to make the investment?
It is a matter of perspective – by contrast The International
Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals sees
its digitisation programme as a mission, and works on a shoestring; I suspect
its board would love to be given £11,600, considering the huge amount they do
on much less; and Lexscien isn’t expanding, that money was just to stand still.
Looking at the way Lexscien is run, it is
a shame the SPR went down this route, effectively ceding control of its own
property, but it was a canny move by the C-FAR directors, especially as the
source material, for the SPR element at least, was donated by SPR members. The problem is that even a
ring-fenced online library is seen as an asset for the SPR (though
unquantifiable) as it acts as an incentive for membership. It looks like the SPR is locked into an
unfavourable deal unless it decides to start again, and given the size of the
job, and as David and Julie Rousseau are both SPR Council members, that is an
unlikely proposition. In the meantime
other SPR publications such as the Myers Memorial Lectures, the newsletter that
preceded The Psi Researcher, and many ad-hoc booklets, languish in limbo. C-Far may be doing well out of the
arrangement with its partners, but can the same be said for the constituency it
is supposed to serve?
Appendix
The following SPR publications would be
valuable additions to a properly-conducted online library, but none of which is
at present, as far as I am aware, available electronically. I doubt if this is a comprehensive list but
it gives an idea of some of the publications issued by the SPR that exist in
limited quantities, largely unavailable to serious researchers interested in
the Society’s history and the evolution of the subject. They are worth preserving in an online SPR
archive even where they have been superseded by later research:
The
Society for Psychical Research: Its Rise & Progress & a Sketch of its
Work,
by Edward T. Bennett (R. Brimley Johnson, 1903).
Telepathy
and Allied Phenomena,
by Rosalind Heywood, with a section on quantitative experiments by S. G. Soal
(1948).
Trance
Mediumship: An Introductory Study of Mrs Piper and Mrs Leonard, by W. H. Salter,
revised by Margaret Eastman (1950, revised edition 1962).*
Hints
on Sitting with Mediums, by E.O, D.P and W.H. S. [Edward Osborn, Denys
Parsons and W. H. Salter] (1950; this replaced an earlier leaflet, and was
further revised in 1965 by D.P, R.H.T and A.G [Denys Parsons, Robert Thouless
and Alan Gauld]).
The Society for Psychical Research:
Objects and Activities (1952).
Tests
for Extrasensory Perception, by D. J. West (1953, revised edition 1954).
Notes
for Investigators of Spontaneous Cases, by G. W. L. [Guy Lambert] (1955).
‘Spirit’
Photography,
by Simeon Edmunds (1965). [The complete text of ‘Spirit’ Photography (1965) was reprinted as part of an issue of the
Journal of the London Institute of
’Pataphysics, number 12, February 2016.
It is accompanied by illustrations of photographs taken by some of those
individuals Edmunds mentions.]
Notes
for Investigators of Spontaneous Cases, by A.D.C and A.G [A. D. Cornell and Alan
Gauld] (1968).
The
Society for Psychical Research: An Outline of its History, by W. H. Salter,
edited with a new section and a bibliography by Renée Haynes (1970; first
published 1948). The 1948 edition
replaced The Society for Psychical
Research: What it is, what it has accomplished, why its work is so important
(no author, 1945).
Tests
for Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis: An Introductory Guide, by John L.
Randall (n.d.) [1980]
SPR
Newsletter (36
issues, 1981-91, edited for most of that time by Susan Blackmore).
The
Importance of Psychical Research, by John Beloff (1988).
Guide
to the Investigation of Apparitions, Hauntings, Poltergeists and Kindred
Phenomena,
by Mary Rose Barrington (ed.) (1996).
*The first edition of Trance Mediumship (1950) contains three appendices – ‘Personal
Control in Trance Sittings’ by C. Drayton Thomas and ‘Telepathy from the
Sitter’ by Mrs Kenneth Richmond [Zoë Richmond], plus a reading list. The 1962 revision replaced all three
appendices with a new one written by Margaret Eastman. Probably between 1965 and 1968 Salter’s 1950
original was reissued and it entirely ignored Eastman’s revisions, reinstating
the three original appendices. Her short-lived
version is now scarce. The 1965-8 date for
the reissue is suggested by the fact
that the SPR republished its booklets in a uniform design with white gloss card
covers during that period: ‘Spirit’
Photography and Hints on Sitting with
Mediums in 1965 and Notes for
Investigators of Spontaneous Cases in 1968.
SPR Study Guides
These were originally issued in 1980 in
plain white paper covers, and later reissued in stiff coloured card covers. Series editors were Francis Hitching and
Hilary Evans. An extensive set was
envisaged by the Society’s Publications Committee; the costs of the project
proved controversial, however, and according to the SPR’s 1980 Annual Report
(printed in JSPR, Vol 51, 1981), only four were published. The following five titles were listed on the
back of each copy, but Michael Thalbourne’s Glossary was apparently not produced. Instead, the first edition of his A Glossary of Terms Used in Parapsychology, no doubt larger in scope than would have
been possible within the confines of a Study Guide, was published by
Heinemann as part of its SPR centenary series in 1982.
1 PSI
in the laboratory: 12 Crucial Findings, by Francis Hitching.
2 Glossary
of Terms Used in Parapsychology, by Michael Thalbourne.
3 Apparitions,
by Andrew MacKenzie.
4 Books
on the Paranormal: An Introductory Guide, by Nicholas Clark-Lowes.
5 Reincarnation,
by David Christie-Murray.
The Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial Lectures
Conviction
of Survival: Two Discourses in Memory of F. W. H. Myers (The First Frederic
W. H. Myers Memorial Lecture), by Oliver Lodge (1929).
Beneath
the Threshold
(The Second Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial Lecture), by T. W. Mitchell (1931).
Supernormal
Aspects of Energy and Matter (The Third Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial
Lecture), by Eugène Osty (1933).
The
Meaning of ‘Survival’
(The Fourth Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial Lecture), by W. Whately Carington
(1935).
Supernormal
Faculty and the Structure of the Mind (The Fifth Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial
Lecture), by C. A. Mace (1937).
Psychical
Research and Theology
(The Sixth Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial Lecture), by W. R. Matthews (1940).
Apparitions (The Seventh
Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial Lecture), by G. N. M. Tyrrell (1942).
Psychical
Research: Where Do We Stand? (The Eighth Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial
Lecture), by Mrs W. H. Salter [Helen Verrall] (1945).
The
Experimental Situation in Psychical Research (The Ninth Frederic W. H. Myers
Memorial Lecture), by S. G. Soal (1947).
Telepathy
and Human Personality
(The Tenth Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial Lecture), by J. B. Rhine (1950).
Psychical
Research Past and Present (The Eleventh Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial Lecture),
by Robert H. Thouless (1952).
The
Influence of Psychic Phenomena on My Philosophy (The Twelfth
Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial Lecture), by Garbriel Marcel (1955).
Personal
Identity and Survival
(The Thirteenth Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial Lecture), by C. D. Broad (1958).
The
Neurophysiological Aspects of Hallucinations and Illusory Experience (The Fourteenth
Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial Lecture), by W. Grey Walter (1960).
Unconscious
and Paranormal Factors in Healing and Recovery (The Fifteenth
Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial Lecture), by Emilio Servadio (1963).
Survival
: A Reconsideration
(The Sixteenth Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial Lecture), by E. Garth Moore
(1966).
Psychology
and Psychical Research (The Seventeenth Frederic W. H. Myers Memorial
Lecture), by Cyril Burt (1968).
The Psychical
Experiences series published by G. Bell & Sons
In 1937-9, G. Bell published a series of
books based on the files of the SPR.
These are out of print and would be worth having in an online library. This may not be a complete list:
Hypnosis:
Its Meaning and Practice, by Eric Cuddon (1938, revised 1957).
Some
Cases of Prediction: A Study, by Edith Lyttelton (1937).
Evidence
of Identity,
by Kenneth Richmond (1939).
Evidence
of Purpose,
by Zoë Richmond (1938).
Ghosts
and Apparitions,
by W. H. Salter (1938).
Evidence
of Personal Survival from Cross Correspondences, by H. F.
Saltmarsh (1938).
Foreknowledge, by H. F.
Saltmarsh (1938).
(Appendix revised and updated 19 May 2016)
Update 19 January 2026:
Beginning with the January 2025 issue, articles in the
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (JSPR) have been
assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) numbers. This and subsequent issues are freely
available on the SPR’s website (www.spr.ac.uk), easily found by accessing the
Publications/Recordings/Web events tab at the top of the home page. A short article in issue 15 of The
Magazine of the Society for Psychical Research (MSPR), 2024, by JSPR
editor David Vernon, explains the new system.
Tucked away at the very bottom of the home page there
is a link for members to download individual “current and recent issues” of JSPR. These start with the April 2011 issue and
finish with the April 2025 issue (thus overlapping with the new DOI regime),
plus the Proceedings from 2008 to the latest, dated October 2023. The MSPR is also available, running
from issue 1 (2021). Unlike Lexscien,
neither the DOI nor the non-DOI issues of JSPR are capable of a bulk
keyword search.
Wondering how the new DOI system would impact the
Lexscien online library, in September 2025 I wrote to C-FAR (i.e. Julie and
David Rousseau), which runs Lexscien, to ask whether it would continue to add JSPR
now the DOI system was in place.
Assuming they wouldn’t, would issues of JSPR at least be added to
Lexscien to bring it up to the point the DOIs begin? I had previously established from David
Vernon that there were no plans to make the DOI system retrospective, so it would
not include issues prior to January 2025.
Bringing Lexscien up to the point the DOI system starts would make the
entire run of JSPR available on the two platforms. I also asked which were the most recent
issues of the SPR’s publications (JSPR, Proceedings and MSPR)
in the Lexscien online library.
I was told by Julie Rousseau that JSPR is
included in Lexscien up to and including vol. 81 (2017), Proceedings to
vol 59 (2008-11) and Paranormal Review (the previous name of the now
laboriously-titled MSPR) to vol. 81 (2017). The plan was to bring Proceedings up
to date (vol. 61, October 2023), though a subsequent email cast doubt on this
proposal, but there were no plans to add further issues of JSPR or Paranormal
Review/MSPR. While it is
possible to access all issues of JSPR, albeit across three areas, there
is a gap in Paranormal Review availability between 2017 and 2021. This could be rectified by adding the missing
issues to the SPR website.
Ideally, we would have all our publications in one
place, with a keyword search. A revamped
Lexscien could provide such a platform for easy access, but this is clearly not
currently an option. As Lexscien is not
going to be brought up to the point the DOI Journal issues start, I
suggested to David Vernon he could consolidate the post-2017 issues on the
website by assigning DOIs retrospectively to bridge the gap. This would facilitate access to the complete
run on the two platforms, whereas at the moment someone wishing to search for a
topic in JSPR has to access Lexscien (to 2017), individual non-DOI
issues from 2017 to 2025, and individual DOI-assigned issues from 2025
onwards. It is clearly a cumbersome
process and makes JSPR less easy to use for research, particularly
having lost the keyword search facility which makes Lexscien so useful. Similarly, whereas Lexscien combines all the
publications, the Proceedings and Paranormal Review/MSPR
issues on the SPR website have to be searched separately.
Well, I received a lukewarm response. Julie Rousseau (whom I copied in as a
courtesy and who would not have been affected by my proposal to backdate DOIs)
gave me a lengthy primer on the difference between the way Lexscien and DOIs
work. David Vernon noted that the
post-2017 issues of JSPR were on the website, and therefore available,
and there would be a cost to assigning DOIs to those prior to January
2025. He was not enthusiastic about my
suggestion. So researchers will need to
use Lexscien plus scrabble around on the SPR website for later issues to access
the entirety of JSPR and Proceedings. A further implication of my exchanges is that
Lexscien – a significant member benefit – is probably on borrowed time.
It is worth noting that having Journal DOI
issues freely available to all on the SPR website dents the economics of
Lexscien’s model, which was to make SPR material free to members, and charge
non-members. Indirectly it also impacts
Society membership. Lexscien was
originally designed to have a gap (around two years) between the publication of
the physical JSPR and its appearance in Lexscien, to avoid the situation
of potential members deciding to subscribe to Lexscien rather than pay the
Society’s membership fee. Now they can
read and download JSPR from 2025 free, the same consideration will
increasingly apply, except they won’t be paying anybody anything.
As further evidence that Lexscien is an opportunity
lost, recently I came across an email I received from Alan Gauld on 3 December
2008:
“I was pleased to see in your review of [Archie Roy’s]
The Eager Dead for the FT [Fortean Times] that you
expressed a hope that the Cross-Correspondence volumes would soon be available
on-line. I put in a lot of work
photocopying them and David Rousseau told me earlier in the year that he hoped
to have them done by the end of the summer.
But I haven't heard anything! It
is the only move that could possibly lead to developments in studying them.”
For some reason they were never uploaded to Lexscien, and
interested parties have been unable to study this important part of the SPR’s
history. Judging by past performance, it
seems highly unlikely they will be included now. It would be sad to think that Alan’s effort was
wasted, so perhaps they could be made available in some other way. Perhaps the International Association for the
Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals would give them a home (it
is worth mentioning that IAPSOP, a free searchable website, carries the SPR’s Journal
and Proceedings to 1952). Or some
future individuals with sufficient time and energy could revamp Lexscien with a
modern look and robust software, replacing glitchy OCR pages and adding some of
the other publications with which the SPR has been involved over the decades, plus
the cross-correspondences. That would
make it an invaluable resource.
Reference
Vernon, David. ‘An Update on JSPR’, The
Magazine of the Society for Psychical Research, issue 15, 2024, pp. 23-4.
